Delay continues for Cobb EMC directors' vote

By Margaret Newkirk

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Customers of Marietta-based Cobb EMC will have to wait several more months before getting a chance to vote on the customer-owned co-op's board.

The Georgia Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear one of the electric co-op's challenges to an order allowing those elections to go forward.

The co-op's 200,000 customers in Cobb, north Fulton, Cherokee and Bartow counties have not been able to vote on the co-op's board since September 2007, because of continuing litigation over how those elections should be held.

A group of customers sued Cobb EMC in the fall of 2007, saying co-op management had siphoned the nonprofit co-op's assets to Cobb Energy, a for-profit company they owned and controlled. The lawsuit followed an Atlanta Journal-Constitution story on the companies.

The two sides settled in December 2008, and the for-profit company returned to Cobb EMC's ownership. The deal let co-op management and directors stay, but laid out a process for customers to vote on most of the board within a year.

Days after the deal was signed, though, the co-op board quietly changed its election process. Calling that an attempt to compromise the board votes, plaintiffs went back to court. Over two years, the co-op won once and the plaintiffs twice. The co-op asked the state's highest court to take it up in the spring.

The Supreme Court won't hear most of the co-op's challenges, but will consider whether the co-op violated the settlement when it changed its voting system. The state constitution gives the court through June to rule.

A Cobb County grand jury is also looking at Cobb EMC and its management.